


see your life out the window

by arabmorgan



Series: If I Lose Myself [3]
Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Fairies, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Urban Fantasy, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29758284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arabmorgan/pseuds/arabmorgan
Summary: In which Wooyoung finds a family and Yeosang finds, among other things, a job.
Relationships: Jung Wooyoung/Kang Yeosang
Series: If I Lose Myself [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2162070
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> And so we finally get to some backstories~

Wooyoung dies around the turn of the twentieth century.

It’s a horrible time to be turned, when vampire-human relations are at rock-bottom, and Korea is less than a decade from falling under Japanese rule. There is no part of the country that isn’t in turmoil – vampire hunters are out in full force, killing and being killed gruesomely, but so are the vampires, attacking every human they can get their hands on in an attempt to turn them.

As it turns out, Wooyoung isn’t even killed as part of the agenda for vampire supremacy. He’s run over in the middle of the night by a carriage drawn by a horse that’s been spooked by a furiously barking dog, bowled over by the sheer weight of a terrified animal before a heavy, metal-rimmed wheel bounces over his torso and shatters innumerable bones in his chest. The driver, struggling with the reins in his hands, doesn’t even look back.

Wooyoung’s maker finds him as he’s gurgling incomprehensibly on the side of the street, his punctured lungs filling slowly with blood. He stares up at her with eyes huge with pain, begging for relief from this small woman with her demure stance, who looks more likely to scream and run away at the sight of him than to help. He’s in too much agony to wonder why a lady dressed in expensive silks would be out on the streets alone when the moon is high.

Instead of running, she kneels beside Wooyoung and draws him lovingly into her arms, lowers her face to his neck, and slices a clean gash right through his artery. Blood spurts out onto the street, spraying crimson onto the cobblestone, and Wooyoung spasms in her lap for a moment before his eyes roll up in his head and he falls limp. She waits until the gushing flow turns into a slow leak before pumping him full of vampire venom, and then she tosses him unceremoniously in a nearby alley and leaves without waiting to see if the change will take.

The vampires are at war, and she has more unsuspecting victims to claim that night.

It takes more than a day for the change to run its course, and the night is once again young when Wooyoung’s eyes snap open, bright and gleaming in the darkness. He hardly remembers the pain of his crushed ribcage as he trots out into the city he was born in, a strange, sibilant hiss whispering out from between his parted lips as he looks around in faint confusion. The nightlife is louder than he remembers, and the pale shine of the moon more radiant.

It’s habit more than anything that leads him back to his usual night haunts, one of the quieter streets just off an entire row of alcoholic establishments, like a ghost who doesn’t yet know he’s dead. He’s only been standing there for a few seconds when he hears footsteps behind him and the voice of one of his regulars, calling his name in the man’s usual laughing tone.

Wooyoung turns eagerly, and the man recoils in an instant at the sight of him, one side of his clothes red with blood and his brand-new fangs gleaming white out of his mouth – but it’s too late. The man’s scent is thick in Wooyoung’s nostrils, the sweet, delectable smell of human blood drawing him forward, and Wooyoung is on him like an over-eager dog before either of them even know what is happening.

Wooyoung rips into the man’s throat so enthusiastically that more blood splashes onto his face than he manages to swallow, but he’s too busy gulping thirstily at the hot liquid to even notice. When he lifts his head at last, he looks like a nightmare creature come to life, blood painting his cheeks and dripping from his chin, his mouth gaping in a snarl to accommodate his unwieldy fangs.

Dropping the lifeless body, he makes to wander off openly into the night, his mind still a dull fog of confusion and thirst. Something has changed, but he doesn’t yet know what. In this new era of vampires openly traversing the streets instead of hiding in the shadows, newborns have become prime targets of hunters for that exact reason – half of them don’t even realise what they’ve become before they’re killed, much less their own newfound strength and agility.

A punishing grip wraps abruptly around Wooyoung’s wrist before he can get too far, and he looks up into the fierce gaze of none other than Park Seonghwa. Wooyoung’s eyes widen, and then he lowers his head instinctively, cowed by the old vampire’s regal attire. _A customer_ , he thinks automatically.

“Come,” is all Seonghwa says calmly, without a single word of explanation, and Wooyoung does, another street urchin who vanishes off the streets forever without a single soul to notice his disappearance.

* * *

Seonghwa doesn’t much care for the revolution going on right then. He’s old, even for a vampire, and he prefers it when their numbers are kept in check out of need for secrecy. All this irresponsible turning is only diminishing their food supply and creating more competition for blood in a city already overcrowded with vampires.

Still, he cares to interfere even less. Everything passes, and so too will this silly vampire-human feud, and Seonghwa will be there to see it to its end.

Not that Wooyoung knows any of this at first, of course. He’s too busy learning how to function in an actual household for the first time in years, and a vampire household at that.

He has a deep respect for Seonghwa, not to mention a healthy amount of fear of the old vampire, but everyone else in the coven is, to him, fair game. Seeing as Wooyoung is only the second newborn Seonghwa has taken in in half a century, it ends up being Mingi who bears the brunt of Wooyoung’s spiteful antics.

Wooyoung can’t help it – everything is a competition to him in those early years. He has to feed first, shower first, even reach Seonghwa first when he calls from the next room over. That’s just how he’s been living on the streets for as long as he can remember – he was the best at what he did, and that was why he survived when others didn’t.

It doesn’t help that Mingi, seized with a sudden and violent bout of sibling rivalry after decades of peaceful coexistence with Seonghwa, tends to respond to Wooyoung’s childishness with an equally petty, “Well, I was here first!” because Wooyoung knows that fact very well, and he hates it with every fibre of his being.

“No, Wooyoung. I’m not throwing either of you out,” Seonghwa says like a tired parent, every time Wooyoung comes running to him with fresh complaints about everything Mingi has done wrong. “You’re going to be brothers for a very long time, barring any unfortunate accidents, so please learn to get along before I make you.”

“If Seonghwa throws anyone out, it’s going to be you,” Mingi retorts later on. “I was here first.”

Wooyoung stares at him, trembling with rage at Mingi’s audacity to put his fears so neatly into words, and slams back into his room to hide his shaking hands.

Finally, tired of the constant bickering going on under his nose, Seonghwa puts Mingi in charge of Wooyoung’s lessons – how to blend in with the humans, how to feed without killing, how to drop and retract his fangs at will. Mingi shrugs like spending hours on end by Wooyoung’s side doesn’t bother him one bit, but Wooyoung balks at the very thought.

“He’s going to teach me the wrong things so that the hunters will get me,” Wooyoung complains, but the glare that Seonghwa immediately turns on him is so stern that he shrinks back in an instant.

“He will not,” Seonghwa says flatly, and that is pretty much that.

Seonghwa is, of course, right. Mingi is a careful, serious teacher out in public, and Wooyoung knows too little about being a vampire to dare to act up. He soon learns to trust Mingi’s signals, to glance across the room for the older vampire’s nod of approval before he approaches a potential meal. He doesn’t need much help to present himself attractively to humans – be small, be weak; he’s intimately familiar with the crux of it all – but more than once Mingi has shaken his head, spotting the signs of a hunter in disguise that Wooyoung has missed.

Without Wooyoung even realising, the petty squabbling dies down just as quickly as it starts. His competitive streak is entrenched too firmly in him to ever fade, but his insults are now more in the vein of playful ribbing, and are usually followed by a goofy grin that Mingi always returns cheerfully enough.

Slowly, carefully, Wooyoung settles into his new life of nocturnal blood-drinking with the dogged adaptability born of rough living. Around him, the human-vampire landscape continues to evolve, and the number of newborns like him – roughly turned and then coldly abandoned – plummets in the fresh, tentative peace that emerges in the wake of the Korean War.

Nothing much ever seems to touch the relative comfort of their small coven, and like Seonghwa, Wooyoung takes little notice of anything that doesn’t relate to his own survival.

Finally, sixty-odd years after Wooyoung is picked up off the streets, Seonghwa returns home with a shy-looking vampire in tow, and that is how Wooyoung meets Choi San for the very first time.

* * *

Even after San’s arrival, it is Wooyoung who remains the undisputed baby of Seonghwa’s coven – it’s an irrefutable fact, even if San is technically the youngest of them all and the very last to join them.

In part it is because San joins the family not as a clueless, bloodthirsty newborn who needs to be carefully parented but as an adult vampire, already experienced in the workings of their world. San is simply in search of a new coven, having recently lost his maker to a fairy attack during their travels, and he is all too happy to keep the peace in his new home, even if that means bending over backwards to accommodate Wooyoung’s snooty demands.

Of course, there is also the fact that the entire coven has become accustomed to spoiling Wooyoung rotten over the decades, simply because he is present and demanding, and it doesn’t occur to San to question the precedent that has been set.

San’s arrival throws Wooyoung for a loop at first. His old instincts rise up strongly at the perceived threat, bristling at the entrance of what appears to be direct competition, and he has absolutely no compunctions whatsoever about making San’s life a living hell for the first year or so after his arrival.

He complains when Mingi and San go out to feed together. He complains whenever San so much as says two words to Seonghwa. He complains when San opens the fridge before Wooyoung can do so himself. There is nothing San can do that pleases Wooyoung, even when he slinks around the house nervously like a frightened little mouse.

At last, Seonghwa pulls Wooyoung aside with a faint air of exasperation about him. “Sit down,” he says calmly, and Wooyoung immediately sits, no questions asked.

Wooyoung swallows nervously. He has a feeling he knows what Seonghwa is about to say – he knows, he _does_ , that he shouldn’t be treating San like that, but he can’t help it. He just gets defensive around the other vampire. San is so much easier to deal with than Wooyoung is, so much sweeter and kinder, and it makes him anxious.

“Look, Wooyoung. We love you,” is what Seonghwa says, so matter-of-fact that he might as well be saying that the sky is blue, and Wooyoung’s jaw falls open stupidly. “The only reason you will ever leave this coven is if you want to, I promise you that. Do you really think so little of me, that I would kick you to the curb just because San is now living with us?”

Wooyoung shakes his head mutely, his lip quivering as he blinks up at Seonghwa.

The older vampire’s stern mien softens just a little. “I know you’re not a malicious person at heart, Wooyoung. It’s not easy to be kind, but I just need you to try,” Seonghwa says gently. “You learned to love Mingi, and I know you can do the same for San.”

Wooyoung does try, because there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Seonghwa, but he just doesn’t know _how_. He can’t find anything meaningful to say, so he mostly ends up ignoring San whenever they find themselves in the same vicinity.

“Just ask him about his life or something,” Mingi suggests when Wooyoung comes whining to him about how awkward it is to be around San, and somehow he makes it sound like the most obvious solution in the world. “He’s not going to initiate conversation with you after you’ve spent months terrorising him. You’re such a brat.” Mingi grins his silly, eye-crinkling grin, and immediately lifts his arm to fend off the expected smack of Wooyoung’s hand.

The next time Wooyoung finds himself sitting opposite San, he takes a deep breath and demands, “So what are fairies like?”

San gapes at him for a moment before attempting to hide his shock, and he looks so pathetically unthreatening that perhaps Wooyoung feels just a little bit bad about everything he’s put San through.

“They’re…bright,” San says at last. “Blindingly bright. And there’s some sort of magic in their voice, a mesmer or something. I don’t know.” He looks down, chewing on his bottom lip, and Wooyoung realises that maybe asking San about the creatures that had killed his maker isn’t the best idea he’s had.

Nevertheless, it’s a start.

San, Wooyoung soon comes to realise, has some very fascinating ideas about the vampire lifestyle. Unlike Seonghwa and Mingi, San loves to mingle with humans even outside of his feeding needs. He’s always frequenting the newly-opened vampire club nearby, dancing and chatting with the few curious humans who nervously trickle their way in. Occasionally, he’ll even find one he likes enough to bring home for a couple of hours.

Wooyoung doesn’t understand it. He’s never had any interest in sleeping with his meals, or with anyone else for that matter – he thinks he’s had quite enough sex for the rest of his life, thank you very much.

“They like me,” San explains simply, and his smile as he looks at Wooyoung is sharp with loss. “It reminds me of being human again, of being in love. It’s nice to do things with someone you like – it doesn’t even matter what it is as long as you’re doing it together.”

“If you say so,” Wooyoung says doubtfully, but all the same he’s too curious not to follow San to the vampire clubs. It’s a great place for feeding, at least, almost wholly eradicating the need for the old nightly prowl, and Wooyoung likes the excitement of the atmosphere well enough even if he has little interest in the humans themselves.

Sometimes Seonghwa will pop by like a father checking in on his children, but by and large Seonghwa and Mingi continue to live by the old ways, seeking humans out only when they’re thirsty.

As for Wooyoung, he quickly learns to adapt to the dawn of the twenty-first century, to the computers and the mobile phones and the lightspeed internet that leap into his life one after the other. After all, survival has always been the one thing he’s undeniably good at – he means absolutely no offence to San’s maker, but Wooyoung doesn’t intend to live for an entire century only to be taken out by something as stupid as a glowing fairy.


	2. Chapter 2

Yeosang doesn’t know much about his conception, which isn’t too out of the ordinary for most folks, but then neither do either of his parents, it seems.

His father has only very vague memories of meeting Yeosang’s mother in the mountain ranges of Pohang in his youth – “I was probably quite drunk,” is how he puts it, although Yeosang uncomfortably suspects that a mesmer may be the main issue with his father’s lack of clarity here. Months later, there’s a baby in his apartment that he somehow knows is his, and that’s pretty much how Yeosang ends up growing up in Seoul.

He meets his mother for the first time when he is twelve, when his father brings him on a trip to reconnect with his roots or some such. She appears to him seemingly out of nowhere, glowing as brightly as an angel and looking no older than thirty. Her features are small and delicate, the fabric adorning her body light and diaphanous, but her smile when it comes is quick and sharp.

“You’re my boy,” she breathes, not quite lovingly but as if she is fascinated by his very existence. “My lovely little mongrel. How sweet you are.” Her palm brushes Yeosang’s cheek and she giggles, and then she flits away back into the trees and is gone.

That is the very first thing Yeosang learns about fairies – that the tales are true, that they are capricious and easily-amused, and often cruel without meaning to be. Nothing ever holds their interest for long, not even their own offspring, as it turns out.

He makes the trip to Pohang at least once a year anyway. His mother always shows up without fail the moment he sets foot into the forest, even if only for less than a minute before she tires of his presence. Whatever she is and however she treats him, she’s still his mother, and the only one he knows.

“There is no use to living without pleasure,” is what she says to Yeosang once, part of the brief, random collection of unhelpful advice that she bestows thoughtlessly upon him, and that he squirrels away carefully in one corner of his mind.

“Do whatever you like, my child. I did not make you to be tied down by mortal cares,” she tells him sagely, as if she has any idea at all what he does and doesn’t do.

Only once does she ever mention the word 'vampire' to him, but like everything else that crosses her lips, Yeosang never forgets it. “Always be wary of the vampires, my sweet. They have no fondness for our kind. Your blood is a weapon – use it when you must.”

Truthfully, however, Yeosang has never felt very connected to his fairy side – whatever fairy attributes he does have just aren’t particularly useful at best and a chore to deal with at worst.

For one thing, he glows, just a little bit and not too noticeably, and he does have the entrancing, symmetrical features of his mother, but he finds the attention it garners him exhausting to deal with. There’s only so many times he can hear about how clear his skin looks and how beautiful his face is before getting heartily sick of it.

For another, he can certainly do a weak approximation of a mesmer, but being more in possession of a conscience than a full-blooded fairy, he’s never really needed or wanted to use it on anyone anyway.

As it is, Yeosang only meets his first real friend in his second year of high school, when his new seatmate’s first words to him are, “Hey, did you know that vampires can hide their fangs?”

Sure, it’s a little weird, but it’s not a comment about his face or an inappropriate proposition, and he doesn’t set off any of Yeosang’s highly developed creep sensors, so he comes to a quick decision – Jeong Yunho is alright in his book.

“They can?” he says quickly, before the atmosphere can get irreversibly awkward, and Yunho grins back at him, warm and open.

* * *

Yeosang completely gives up on his education after graduating from high school. His father isn’t best pleased, but Yeosang is happy to blame it on his mercurial fairy side – he just can’t seem to stick to one interest for long, and at this point finding a job is calling to him more strongly than having to slog through university.

It takes him a few months to finally get his first job offer, from a call centre for a credit card company, and he doesn’t think twice before accepting it. It’s not a exactly a fun time and he spends an absurd amount of time getting yelled at by angry customers who seem not to realise that he holds no power in the company, but he does at least get some interesting callers every now and again. His supervisor doesn’t try to hit on him a single time either, so there’s that as well.

“If you really need the money and you’re not anaemic or something, you could try being a feeder,” Hongjoong suggests one day over lunch.

Yeosang blinks confusedly at his supervisor, wondering which part of him looks like he’s working because he’s in desperate need of money and not because he just doesn’t feel like using his brain in school. “A feeder?” he repeats hesitantly. “You mean for vampires?”

Hongjoong shrugs, like letting an undead monster munch on his neck on a regular basis is a perfectly viable career option in his eyes. “I don’t do it anymore, but I still have a couple of contacts if you need them. Don’t just go offering yourself to any old vampire on the street though – even vampires can be scammers,” he says with a laugh. “My friends won’t over-drink and they pay well because, you know, it’s literally blood out of your body. It’s worth _something_. Plus it feels fantastic, so it’s a win-win for everyone.”

Yeosang raises a brow in genuine surprise. “It really feels nice?” he asks, voice lowering automatically as he leans forward. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, especially from Yunho, who’s still as vampire-obsessed as ever, but somehow he’d always figured it was an exaggeration, or some kind of made-up porn thing.

One corner of Hongjoong’s mouth tilts upwards in a secretive sort of smile. “Very,” he says simply, with such conviction that Yeosang doesn’t think to question him for a moment.

Not too long after, his father is laid off from his job suddenly and unexpectedly, and Hongjoong’s assumption about Yeosang’s financial situation turns into truth. Crushed at the sudden upheaval in his life, Yeosang’s father leaves him their small Seoul apartment and moves back home, back to Pohang and the town of his childhood, and of course the mountains where he had once met Yeosang’s mother in a dimly-remembered fever dream, so many years ago.

Yeosang still doesn’t take Hongjoong up on the offer – he remembers his mother’s words clearly, and he doesn’t think he _can_ let vampires drink from him anyway – but that doesn’t mean he stops thinking about it. _Your blood is a weapon._ Are fairies and vampires historical enemies of some sort? And what does that even mean? Should he start keeping his blood in a vial around his neck and sprinkle it on an attacking vampire like holy water?

As expected, Yeosang’s questions go unanswered.

Unlike vampires, there’s little to no information on fairies to be found anywhere. Fairies are known to be deeply attuned to nature and never come close to cities if they can help it. They’re considered too dangerous and unpredictable to research in any capacity – it’s a toss-up if a human will come out of a fairy encounter mangled or with a new baby, or if they’ll even reappear at all. Sometimes Yeosang gets the feeling that if his half-fairy status becomes public knowledge, he’ll be shipped off to a secret government facility before he can even say ‘help’.

He meets Yunho for lunch one weekend, and relays some of Hongjoong’s information to his friend when the inevitable topic of vampires comes up. “I’m surprised you haven’t tried it yet,” he teases. “This whole feeder thing. It seems right up your alley, plus the money would probably be useful.”

Yunho scrunches up his nose. “I’ve actually looked into it before,” he admits, and Yeosang freezes in surprise. “I chickened out though. It’s like meeting a celebrity, right? What if vampires turn out to be super lame when I meet them after I’ve spent all my life putting them up on a pedestal?”

Yeosang absolutely has to roll his eyes at that. “They’re just another breed of, you know, sentient…beings. I’m sure they’re all different individually. Maybe some of them are cool and some aren’t.” He shrugs. “You’ll never know till you meet them.”

Yunho sags in his seat defeatedly at the thought, looking small and disheartened. It should be comical, but Yeosang is too fond of Yunho to start laughing at him now.

“Go and check out one of those clubs or something. The ones where you can go to meet vampires,” he suggests through a mouthful of rice. “Those have been around for ages. They should be safe, I think.”

That is, of course, exactly how Yeosang ends up standing beside Yunho outside one of the trendiest vampire clubs in the area, resisting the urge to let out a huge sigh as he eyes the chattering crowd hanging around even outside the building. Yunho’s eyes are wide as he looks around, his grin both awed and uncertain as he glances over at Yeosang as if for reassurance.

“Come on,” Yeosang says firmly, grabbing Yunho by the arm and dragging him forward past the double doors. “I’m not the one who wanted to come here.”

It doesn’t take long for Yunho to get caught up in the pulsing music, and he soon wanders deeper into the throng of people with a smaller, pink-haired man at his side. Whether that man is human or vampire, Yeosang can’t tell at a distance, but he keeps a close eye on them all the same, occasionally sipping at his lemonade when he remembers to.

Clubs are so painfully boring, he thinks to himself dully – and that’s when he hears it, a silky voice coming from off to his left, speaking in that same wheedling, seductive tone that Yeosang’s spent his whole life pointedly fending off.

“No one here catch your fancy?”

_The cost of being a good friend_ , Yeosang thinks dryly as he turns to face the culprit. _Here we go again._

* * *

“It’s just so good,” Yunho says dreamily, resting his cheek against his palm and staring glazedly off into the distance like a Disney princess stuck in a tower. “You get all light and floaty and just really happy. It’s crazy. I mean, I get a little bit horny sometimes too, but that’s not the point, I swear.”

It’s the same spiel Yeosang’s been listening to for weeks, ever since that first cursed day when he let Yunho talk him into going to the vampire club together. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have a problem with it – he’s been listening to Yunho’s vampire talk for years, and he still finds it rather cute how animated Yunho can get about the subject.

It’s just that recently, Yeosang’s stupid, one-track fairy mind has decided that it’s high time to fixate on the vampire bite that’s been making Yunho so happy, and nothing else will distract him. He keeps finding his eyes drifting to the small, dark scabs on Yunho’s neck and just…wondering. He really, _really_ wants to know how it feels, and the fact that he can’t without possibly doing some severe bodily harm to whichever vampire bites him is annoying him to no end.

“San has some friends if you’re interested,” Yunho offers, as if he’s suddenly developed the uncanny ability to read Yeosang’s mind.

Yeosang immediately shakes his head with a snort. “Oh, I know all about San’s friend,” he mutters with a grimace, thinking of the annoying vampire that won’t stop trying to chat him up anytime they come within two feet of each other. “Anyway, I’m not interested in getting bitten. I just want to make sure you’re doing alright and everything, you know.”

Yunho’s eyes focus back onto Yeosang, returning from whatever daydream about vampires he’s been stuck in, and he smiles. “I know,” he says softly, reaching out to pat Yeosang’s hand. “I’ll tell you if anything happens, I promise. You’re the very first person I’ll call.”

“Nothing’s going to happen,” Yeosang sniffs, glancing self-consciously away from Yunho’s puppy-eyed, earnest gaze. “Don’t be dramatic.”

“Yes, well, you’re the one who needs more drama in your life,” Yunho teases.

A month later, Yeosang happily accepts Hongjoong’s invitation to his small birthday gathering, gets drunk enough to forget that Wooyoung should never be allowed anywhere near his neck, and then proceeds to become fuck-buddies with a vampire. It’s all very dramatic indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'll pop back into Wooyoung's pov in 2 or 3 weeks, as the [woosang fest](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/WoosangFicFest/profile) will be posting sometime next week. Please show all the fics lots of support! :")


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